Counting subjects

Kolak’s arguments for the thesis ‘there is only one person’ in fact show that the subject-in-itself is not a countable entity. The paper argues for this assertion by comparing Kolak’s concept of the subject with Kant’s notion of the transcendental unity of apperception (TUAP), which is a formal feature of experience and not countable. It also argues the point by contrasting both the subject and the TUAP with the notion of the individual human being or empirical self, which is the main concern standard theories of personal identity such as those of Williams, Parfit and Nozick. Unlike the empirical self, but rather like Kant’s TUAP, the subject-in-itself cannot be counted because it is not an object or substance, despite Kolak’s thesis that there is only one. The paper also maintains that Kolak’s contention that the subject is an entity hinges on a strong and less plausible interpretation of Kant’s transcendental idealism.     

Metaphysics as interpretation of conscious life: some remarks on D. Henrich’s and D. Kolak’s thinking

In this article, I discuss the manner in which Dieter Henrich’s theory of subjectivity has emerged from the fundamental questions of German Idealism, and in what manner and to what extent this theory effects a reinstatement of metaphysics. In so doing, I shall argue that Henrich’s position represents a viable refutation of the attempt of the physicalist explanation of the world to prove the concept of the subject to be superfluous. Henrich’s metaphysics of subjectivity is primarily focused on the ‘ultimate questions’ which also compose “the deep levels of our subjectivity” and concern the factors that should promote stability in our emotional, moral and intellectual life. I argue with Henrich that the indisputable facticity of our conscious life is worthy of our special consideration and interpretation, explanation and clarification, just as the deeper meaning (the individual and collective subconscious structure) hidden beneath the layers of apparent comprehensibility calls for urgent investigation. Such interpretation and elucidation of life’s meaning has a tripartite character: first, it consists of clarification of the totality of human experience together with the realities playing a part in it; second, it builds on the process by which the contents of experience are cognized, and the knowledge thereof which results; thirdly, it embraces the transcendental precondition enabling each and every one of us to consciously lead our lives—for life, in a human sense, does not merely happen to one. Henrich’s metaphysical foundation of subjectivity is compared with Kolak‘s position, according to which individual consciousness is not insular, but integrated into the totality of overall unity that some have called “the Universal Self”, “the Noumenal Self”.     

Diversity in unity: practical unity and personal boundaries

In the spirit of the discussion in Daniel Kolak’s I Am You: The Metaphysical Foundation for Global Ethics, I consider the way in which divisions that we usually think of as borders between distinct people occur within a single life. Starting with the dispute between constructionist and non-constructionist views of persons, I argue for a view that places the unity of persons in the dynamic generated by simultaneously taking a constructionist and non-constructionist view of oneself. In order to unify ourselves as agents we need to treat past and future selves as others, but to motivate this endeavor we need to think of ourselves as temporally extended agents, and so identify with past and future selves. Understanding this dynamic illuminates the structure of our agency and the unity of the self.     

Phenomenological immanence,normativity, and semantic externalism

This paper argues that transcendental phenomenology (here represented by Edmund Husserl) can accommodate the main thesis of semantic externalism, namely, that intentional content is not simply a matter of what is ‘in the head,’ but depends on how the world is. I first introduce the semantic problem as an issue of how linguistic tokens or mental states can have ‘content’—that is, how they can set up conditions of satisfaction or be responsive to norms such that they can succeed or fail at referring. The standard representationalist view—which thinks of the problem in first-person terms—is contrasted with Brandom’s pragmatic inferentialist approach, which adopts a third-person stance. The rest of the paper defends a phenomenological version of the representationalist position (seeking to preserve its first-person stance) but offers a conception of representation that does not identify it with an entity ‘in the head.’ The standard view of Husserl as a Cartesian internalist is undermined by rejecting its fundamental assumption—that Husserl’s concept of the ‘noema’ is a mental entity—and by defending a concept of ‘phenomenological immanence’ that has a normative, rather than a psychological, structure. Finally, it is argued that phenomenological immanence cannot be identified with ‘consciousness’ in Husserl’s sense, though consciousness is a necessary condition for it.     

Room for a view: on the metaphysical subject of personal identity

Sydney Shoemaker leads today’s “neo-Lockean” liberation of persons from the conservative animalist charge of “neo-Aristotelians” such as Eric Olson, according to whom persons are biological entities and who challenge all neo-Lockean views on grounds that abstracting from strictly physical, or bodily, criteria plays fast and loose with our identities. There is a fundamental mistake on both sides: a false dichotomy between bodily continuity versus psychological continuity theories of personal identity. Neo-Lockeans, like everyone else today who relies on Locke’s analysis of personal identity, including Derek Parfit, have either completely distorted or not understood Locke’s actual view. Shoemaker’s defense, which uses a “package deal” definition that relies on internal relations of synchronic and diachronic unity and employs the Ramsey–Lewis account to define personal identity, leaves far less room for psychological continuity views than for my own view, which, independently of its radical implications, is that (a) consciousness makes personal identity, and (b) in consciousness alone personal identity consists—which happens to be also Locke’s actual view. Moreover, the ubiquitous Fregean conception of borders and the so-called “ambiguity of is” collapse in the light of what Hintikka has called the “Frege trichotomy.” The Ramsey–Lewis account, due to the problematic way Shoemaker tries to bind the variables, makes it impossible for the neo-Lockean ala Shoemaker to fulfill the uniqueness clause required by all such Lewis style definitions; such attempts avoid circularity only at the expense of mistaking isomorphism with identity. Contrary to what virtually all philosophers writing on the topic assume, fission does not destroy personal identity. A proper analysis of public versus perspectival identification, derived using actual case studies from neuropsychiatry, provides the scientific, mathematical and logical frameworks for a new theory of self-reference, wherein “consciousness,” “self-consciousness,” and the “I,” can be precisely defined in terms of the subject and the subject-in-itself.     

Neuropragmatism, old and new

Recent work in neurophilosophy has either made reference to the work of John Dewey or independently developed positions similar to it. I review these developments in order first to show that Dewey was indeed doing neurophilosophy well before the Churchlands and others, thereby preceding many other mid-twentieth century European philosophers’ views on cognition to whom many present day philosophers refer (e.g., Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty). I also show that Dewey’s work provides useful tools for evading or overcoming many issues in contemporary neurophilosophy and philosophy of mind. In this introductory review, I distinguish between three waves among neurophilosophers that revolve around the import of evolution and the degree of brain-centrism. Throughout, I emphasize and elaborate upon Dewey’s dynamic view of mind and consciousness. I conclude by introducing the consciousness-as-cooking metaphor as an alternative to both the consciousness-as-digestion and consciousness-as-dancing metaphors. Neurophilosophical pragmatism—or neuropragmatism—recognizes the import of evolutionary and cognitive neurobiology for developing a science of mind and consciousness. However, as the cooking metaphor illustrates, a science of mind and consciousness cannot rely on the brain alone—just as explaining cooking entails more than understanding the gut—and therefore must establish continuity with cultural activities and their respective fields of inquiry. Neuropragmatism advances a new and promising perspective on how to reconcile the scientific and manifest images of humanity as well as how to reconstruct the relationship between science and the humanities.     

The “new categorical imperative” and Adorno’s aporetic moral philosophy

This article offers a new interpretation of Adorno’s “new categorical imperative”: it suggests that the new imperative is an important element of Adorno’s moral philosophy and at the same time runs counter to some of its essential features. It is suggested that Adorno’s moral philosophy leads to two aporiae, which create an impasse that the new categorical imperative attempts to circumvent. The first aporia results from the tension between Adorno’s acknowledgement that praxis is an essential part of moral philosophy, and his view according to which existing social conditions make it impossible for moral knowledge to be translated into “right” action. The second aporia results from the tension between the uncompromising sensitivity to suffering that underlies Adorno’s moral thought, and his analysis of the culture industry mechanisms which turn people into happy, satisfied customers—an incompatibility which threatens to pull the rug out from under Adorno’s moral philosophy. My interpretation of the “new categorical imperative” focuses on two characteristics it inherits from the “old,” Kantian one—self-evidence and unconditionality—in order to present the new imperative as a response to these two aporiae.     

A Dilemma for Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness

Higher Order theories of consciousness have their fair share of sympathisers, but the arguments mustered in their support are—to my mind—unduly persuasive. My aim in this paper is to show that Higher Order theories cannot accommodate the possibility of misrepresentation without either falling into contradiction, or collapsing into a First-Order theory. If this diagnosis is on the right track, then Higher Order theories—at least in the specific versions here considered—fail to give an account of what they set out to explain: what is distinctive of ‘conscious’ phenomena.     

Cutting Space—Cutting Body: The Nature of the Grotesque in Umwelt

We give psychological elaboration to some of Rayner’s (2011) ideas. For the idea of a space and boundaries within it many psychological explanations are possible. We elaborate the boundaries as these occur in urban contexts as well as in the flow of irreversible time (between future and past). Shifting boundaries or any act of transforming them leads to changes in the understanding of the whole. Boundaries within space and between different fields—while having a physical existence—have also a symbolic component, which is specific to human beings. We reframe the dynamic concept of boundaries along the lines of Bergson’s idea of durée, which allows us conceptualize boundaries between bodies and environments, as well as boundaries in the environment, as ever transforming in spaces of ambiguity and, following Bakhtin, grotesque. This opens way for treating the boundary phenomena as functionally emerging in person-environment—or, in von Uexküll’s terms, organism-Umwelt relation. Following Heidegger, we conclude that through dynamic boundary-making we as species dwell in the world and make the world.     

Phenomenal consciousness with infallible self-representation

In this paper, I argue against the claim recently defended by Josh Weisberg that a certain version of the self-representational approach to phenomenal consciousness cannot avoid a set of problems that have plagued higher-order approaches. These problems arise specifically for theories that allow for higher-order misrepresentation or—in the domain of self-representational theories—self-misrepresentation. In response to Weisberg, I articulate a self-representational theory of phenomenal consciousness according to which it is contingently impossible for self-representations tokened in the context of a conscious mental state to misrepresent their objects. This contingent infallibility allows the theory to both acknowledge the (logical) possibility of self-misrepresentation and avoid the problems of self-misrepresentation. Expanding further on Weisberg’s work, I consider and reveal the shortcomings of three other self-representational models—put forward by Kreigel, Van Gulick, and Gennaro—in order to show that each indicates the need for this sort of infallibility. I then argue that contingent infallibility is in principle acceptable on naturalistic grounds only if we attribute (1) a neo-Fregean kind of directly referring, indexical content to self-representational mental states and (2) a certain ontological structure to the complex conscious mental states of which these indexical self-representations are a part. In these sections I draw on ideas from the work of Perry and Kaplan to articulate the context-dependent semantic structure of inner-representational states.     

Do ‘Contextualist Cases’ Support Contextualism?

This paper addresses the argument from ‘contextualist cases’—such as for instance DeRose’s Bank cases—to attributor contextualism. It is argued that these cases do not make a decisive case against invariantism and that the debate between contextualists and invariantists will have to be settled on broader theoretical grounds.     

Some differences between Kant’s and Husserl’s conceptions of transcendental philosophy

This article compares the differences between Kant’s and Husserl’s conceptions of the “transcendental.” It argues that, for Kant, the term “transcendental” stands for what is otherwise called “metaphysical,” i.e. non-empirical knowledge. As opposed to his predecessors, who had believed that such non-empirical knowledge was possible for meta-physical, i.e. transcendent objects, Kant’s contribution was to show how there can be non-empirical (a priori) knowledge not about transcendent objects, but about the necessary conditions for the experience of natural, non-transcendent objects. Hence the transcendental for Kant ends up connoting a philosophy that claims to show how subjective forms of intuition and thinking have objective validity for all objects as appearances. By contrast, Husserl’s phenomenological philosophy takes a different set of problems for its starting point. His quest is to avoid the uncertainty of empirical knowledge about all kinds of objects that present themselves to us as something other than, something transcendent to, consciousness. Transcendental or reliable knowledge is made possible through the phenomenological reduction that focuses strictly on consciousness as immediately self-given to itself—reflection upon “pure” consciousness. The contents of such consciousness are not the same for everyone and at every time, so they are not necessary and invariant in the way that Kant’s pure forms of subjectivity are. Since Husserl however also claims that the all objects, as intentional objects, are constituted in and for consciousness, an investigation into the structures of pure subjectivity can also be called “transcendental” in a further sense of showing the genesis of our knowledge of objects that are transcendent to consciousness. Moreover, since Husserl’s philosophical interest is precisely upon the structures of that consciousness, he also concentrates on necessary conditions for the constitution of these objects in his philosophical work. Hence, there ends up being a great deal of overlap between his own transcendental project and Kant’s in spite of the differences in what each of them means by the term “transcendental.”

Aspects of Fluency in Writing

The notion of ‘fluency’ is most often associated with spoken-language phenomena such as stuttering. The present article investigates the relevance of considering fluency in writing. The basic argument for raising this question is empirical—it follows from a focus on difficulties in written and spoken language as manifestations of different problems which should be investigated separately on the basis of their symptoms. Key-logging instruments provide new possibilities for the study of writing. The obvious use of this new technology is to study writing as it unfolds in real time, instead of focusing only on aspects of the end product. A more sophisticated application is to exploit the key-logging instrument in order to test basic assumptions of contemporary theories of spelling. The present study is a dictation task involving words and ‘non-words’, intended to investigate spelling in nine-year-old pupils with regard to their mastery of the doubling of consonants in Norwegian. In this study, we report on differences with regard to temporal measures between a group of strong writers and a group of poor ones. On the basis of these pupils’ writing behavior, the relevance of the concept of ‘fluency’ in writing is highlighted. The interpretation of the results questions basic assumptions of the cognitive hypothesis about spelling; the article concludes by hypothesizing a different conception of spelling.     

Women’s porn sites—Spaces of fissure and eruption or “I’m a little bit of everything”

The historically significant but superficial divide between public and private spaces and identities has shaped women’s lives, subjectivities, and sexualities. In this article, I analyze women’s self-sponsored and self-published porn sites. Specifically, I focus on sites that demonstrate complex articulations of identity and subjectivity—sites that can be read as identity projects that appropriate cultural expectations of sexuality. To foreground this analysis, I first explore past work analyzing the public/private dichotomy and suggest that computers and virtual spaces are used to reinforce the flimsy separation between public and private. Using these discussions as scaffolding, I then read a selection of women’s porn sites, arguing that these women Web authors are inserting their embodied subjectivities into public space, and forcing a remapping of the lines of the public and private in ways that rupture public representations of sexuality. ‘Scarlet collar’ workers are the feminists of the modern age, say psychologists, free from coercion and the dangers of the traditional, male dominated business. In the past two years they have moved away from traditional activities such as prostitution and lap dancing to become the majority of cyberporn owners. —Cherry Norton, 2000, online The woman’s duty, as a member of the commonwealth, is to assist in the ordering, in the comforting, and in the beautiful adornment of the state. —J. Ruskin,Free and Ennobled, 1983, p. 291     

Psychology is About Persons: On Brinkmann’s Expansion of Harré’s Hybrid Psychology

Brinkmann has recently put forward an integrative theory of the mind by expanding Harré’s hybrid psychology. The theory is integrative because it establishes that in order for one to gain a full understanding of the mind—which is represented as a set of dispositions—one has to take into account theories about the brain, the body, social practices, and technological artifacts. All of these are said to be ‘mediators’ upon which the mind depends. An important claim underlying the theory is that in psychology the basic ontological unit is the person. We agree with Brinkmann both on this and on the dispositional nature of the mind. Still, he does not make a strong case for the latter. Furthermore, we believe the concept of mediation is by no means helpful to produce an integrative view in psychology, not only because the theoretical job of such a concept is unclear but also because qua unifying concept it may end up undermining the ontological primacy of the person (in psychology). In this paper we refer to these issues and suggest some ideas that may help improve Brinkmann’s (and Harré’s) proposal.     

Nothingness and the Human Umwelt

In the paper I argue that the great impact of empiricism on psychology and the enclosed dualist agenda traps psychological phenomena into subjectivism. By discussing the phenomena of nothingness in biological and cultural life it is argued that meaning must be considered as a phenomenon that represents both a fit and a misfit of the individual with the environment. By stressing the overall presence of nothingness phenomena it is argued how the reduced ontology of empiricism—and its blindness to relations and transformations out of which meaning grows—should be overcome. In human cultural life, transformations are constitutive and ongoing changes are being produced to make sure that continuity as well as discontinuity will happen. The analysis of especially one case—the removal of an Amish school after a shooting episode—serves to prove how meaning grows out of cultural processes as people produce their own conditions of life. From a cultural-ecological point of view, analyzing meaning at the level of individual phenomenology, hence, means analyzing the ‘total psychological situation’ (legacy of Kurt Lewin). This may for instance include analyzing how people live, what they consider important and worth preserving, what must be changed, what are their core values and how do institutional arrangements contribute to keeping up that which is valued or to changing that which is not, etc. Meaning may be viewed the lived-out experience—the domain of self-generativity in human life.     

Dynamic sensory–motor oscillation and cerebral development

Drawing from Freud’s Project, the author proposes a model of cerebral development whose sensory–motor structure is defined by a frontal–occipital oscillatory dynamic with a twofold function: the oscillation explains the formation and maintenance of mother–infant attunement in cerebral growth, while, at the same time, also explaining the functioning of the projective–introjective dynamic at the basis of psychoanalytic theory. The oscillatory dynamic, according to this perspective, operates as a “bridge” between two seminal theoretical models of developments—the psychoanalytic and the infant research model—which, in turn, leads to the formulation of some neurological hypotheses on how oscillation regulates the elaboration of maternal interaction in the infant’s brain, and how the mother may act to modify it. The paper discusses how the oscillatory dynamic offers an innovative framework for the reconceptualization of the development of mentalization, the function of mirror neurons, and, most interestingly, of the development of language, explaining the non-verbal properties of ordinary linguistic communication and the function of oscillation in the regulation of information exchange processing.     

A Longitudinal Examination of Serious Adolescent Offenders’ Perceptions of Chances for Success and Engagement in Behaviors Accomplishing Goals

We examined antisocial adolescents’ perceptions of the importance of and their ability to accomplish positive life outcomes (e.g., employment) and avoid negative ones (e.g., arrests) during their transition from adolescence to young adulthood. Participants were 1,354 adolescents from the Pathways to Desistance project, a multisite longitudinal study of seriously antisocial adolescents. Participants’ perceptions of the importance and likelihood of accomplishing positive adult goals at one age uniquely predicted how often they engaged in behaviors that were consistent with these goals the following year. Our findings suggest that among serious adolescent offenders aspirations to achieve positive goals are related to engaging in behaviors that bring adolescents’ current selves more in line with their aspired-to future selves. We discuss the implications of these findings for prevention and intervention efforts.